Tempus Mortuus
by Knight Ranger
Summary: Two of Earth's defenders share a new destiny when they discover that their deaths are not part of time's plan.
1. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

"Countdown is progressing. T-Minus three minutes... mark!"

Ace fidgets with the catch on her knife, snapping the blade in and out as scientists rush around her tapping commands into keyboards and monitoring readouts. Above the chaos she can just hear Beckett on the far side of the room, arguing with the Director over video-conference. That isn't anything new of course. Ever since Yvonne Hartman was promoted, she's taken a smug pride in pushing her face into every project and op that they run here, often taking the credit when things go well and quick to apportion the blame when they don't. Ace knows there's history there. What that history is exactly is something Beckett hasn't cared to elaborate on. Still, she knows him well enough to decide whose side she's on.

Just after the two minute mark, a fired-up Beckett spits a curse before cutting the call and moving over to the teststage. "The Kommandant still on your back?" Ace asks rhetorically.

A simple nod affirms the statement anyway. Beckett looks troubled. "You know we can still put a stop to this. We've got nothing to prove to her."

Ace turns to the small team beside and behind her. Other then Beckett, they form the nucleus of the base's permanent operations personnel. The studious looking whitecoats are on loan from London purely for the test. "Maybe not," a man's voice replies with an Irish lilt. "But it's gonna be fun watchin' her wipe the egg off her face f'r sure." The rest smile in response.

Ace turns back and looks at her C.O. with an amused expression of her own. "You heard him."

Beckett nods again, more confidently this time.

"T-Minus sixty seconds and counting," the tannoy sounds.

"That's our cue." Ace steps up the ramp and onto the pentagonal floor.

"Good luck!" Beckett tells them all as the translucent doors roll shut. Ace pockets her knife and slides her coated shades down over her eyes. The others do likewise. The burst of energy produced by this test would blind them otherwise. Arching her neck upwards, she looks at the Collector, an exposed mass of crossfed technology gleaned from past ETIs. With any luck it'll represent humanity's 'Great Leap Forward' in transportation. Suddenly Star Trek doesn't look so futuristic.

"Nervous?" the Irishman asks.

"Kakking me pants mate," a Yorkshire sounding voice replies, doing a fair emulation of a certain sitcom android.

"I was wondering what the smell was," Ace jokes deadpan, prompting a small ripple of laughter.

"T-Minus thirty seconds and counting." The tannoy is now being piped into the enclosed teststage.

"There's no need for fear," a high-pitched but gentle sounding woman announces. "I ran over fifty simulations of this experiment, using the precise parameters we're using now. We're completely safe."

"Always expect the unexpected," Ace prompts.

"How does that work anyway?" the Irishman wonders. "I mean if y'r expectin' the unexpected, then the unexpected isn't really unexpected is it. You've already expected it."

"Oh someone bat him," the Yorkshireman snorts. Ace's calm expression threatens to break out into a grin.

"Twelve... eleven... ten..."

"Remember, no-one look directly at the lens," Ace reminds everyone. "Ready?"

She gets a trio of acknowledgments as the final seconds are spoken off. "Beam us up, Scotty," the Irishman quips.

"Three... two... one..." Then the four agents are bathed in a painfully bright light. At that same moment, in a small town halfway across the world, another massive burst of energy is taking place. Magic and science resonate in a way never felt before on Earth. And the effects are shattering.

The ambient light flashes between extreme glare and pitch darkness like an overpowered strobe. Shapes occasionally reveal themselves, but they're hazy... indistinct. This at least was predicted. Their physical selves are phasing in and out of spatial dimensions at an incredible rate. Light and sound are only reaching their senses between phases, as are oxygen particles, but the transition is so fast as to make the deprivation effects negligible. What wasn't predicted was the jolt of mild nausea that hit Ace as the transport began. Still, it's a small price to pay for the time-saving. Speaking of time... Lifting her wrist, Ace watches the seconds blink by. Twenty-nine... thirty... thirty-one... She holds a breath of anticipation. Then...

... The seconds continue to count upwards. _Damnit!_ she silently curses. She doesn't want to alarm the others, but by the look of them they're already realising this is taking longer than expected. Even in the brightness, Joy is quite clearly ashen-faced. However it isn't for the reason Ace thinks, as she finds out when another hit of nausea grabs her, more violently than the first. She struggles to hold everything in, even as she sees Joy wretch up. Gritting her teeth, she concentrates on the ever changing numerals of her watch. One minute, then two, then three.

Ace stumbles as something collapses against her. It's the prone figure of Joy. She quickly examines her fallen colleague. Joy's breathing is shallow and her breath smells acrid. Poor sod's probably coughed up half her stomach lining. As she looks up, the two guys aren't doing a whole lot better. Dennis looks weak on his feet and Marty's face is set in stone. "Hold it together!" Ace orders. Whether they heard through the staccato accoustics is another matter.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Ace is the last to succumb to the sickness. Her head swims painfully and she can no longer focus on anything, no longer see anything except the constant flicker of light and dark.

Five hundred and fifteen seconds after the experiment began, it ends just as abruptly. Thrown jarringly from her suspended state to hard ground some feet below, Ace winces as she feels her shoulder pop out of its joint. That's the least of her worries though as moments later she feels a godalmighty rumble beneath her. Scrambling to her feet as fast as she's able, she half stumbles away, seconds before the ground splits and sinks like quicksand. Coughing and still queasy, but no longer uncontrollably sick, she peers around in bewilderment. Whatever this place is, it bears no resemblance to London.

"MARTY!" she calls, ignoring the growing throb in her shoulder. "JOY!" But her colleagues are nowhere to be seen. Fear mixes with anger. Why don't they answer her? As the ground splits again beneath her feet, Ace starts to run through the seemingly deserted streets. Expect the unexpected? No-one could have expected this in a million years.

Light shoots up from the widening cracks like lances, creating an odd aurora effect in the sky. And from the cracks a few deformed creatures pull themselves, seared and burned. Ace stops dead in her tracks. Weevils? She's never seen one up close, but they resemble them right enough. Ace slowly pulls her trouser leg up with her good arm. The creatures stare for a moment, then start to advance, quickly. Pulling the small automatic free from its velcro holding strap, Ace takes no time to aim, unloading snap shots into the inhuman mass. And as she does so, the ground starts to rumble once again.


	2. For Death Shall Not Take

Spike is burning from the inside out. He can feel the mystical blaze rushing through him, stimulating long defunct veins and arteries, flowing like liquid fire to almost every extremity. The light grows painful to the eye now, the ever expanding light of destruction. Through the agony a part of his psyche - the long dead poet - detaches itself long enough to philosophise over the ending the fates have given him. _The heavens chased them out in order to be not less beautiful, nor doth the depth of Hell receive them, because the damned would have some glory from them..._

An unholy grinding sound accompanies the assault on his senses and through his crackling eyes, a shape begins to coalesce. Is this the last vision of the damned, or an agent of his final salvation? Within several eternal seconds, the shape solidifies into a box with a flashing blue light on top. Recognising the archaic structure as a final break from reality, Spike starts to laugh hysterically.

* * *

Ace feels the ground splitting again beneath her feet and realises she doesn't have much time to escape. These damn weevils or whatever they are won't let up though. After emptying her clip, she discards the used gun and goes hand-to-hand. Christ, they're tough b*stards! It's taking all her training just to keep from being smeared like a fine jam. Having to compensate for her busted arm certainly isn't helping.

She crunches one creature's face to her knee, breaking what passes for its nose before another one behind her grabs at her head, pulling it back. On pure instinct she grabs the knife from her pocket and in one fluid motion jams the blade in the side of her opponent's neck and rips it forward. Apart from a crimson trickle, there's no significant burst of blood. It's like they have no blood pressure at all. But at least the action has distracted it enough to let her go.

The split beneath her widens, almost causing her to tip over. One weevil does fall back, only to be disintegrated by another lance of light before it can fall into the chasm. Grimly, Ace realises she has two choices, neither of them promising survival. It's funny, all this time she thought she was invincible. Not invulnerable, but after seeing her picture hanging in Windsor Castle, she knew her future was assured. At least until she got to pose for that painting in the distant past. But now it looks like that assumption was a fallacy, 'false logic,' as Marcie used to say. As the reality of her situation caves in around her, she adopts a fatalistic stubbornness. Teetering on the edge of the chasm, she sneers at the remaining creatures: "Come and get me!"

If she has to die, she's going to take as many as these b*stards with her as she can.

* * *

As the inner inferno cools, leaving Spike a barely animated husk, his higher senses come crashing back to him. Images flash like lightning across his mind's eye, then his real eyes flick open with an almost robotic jerk. He stares ahead of himself without comprehension, then blinks. An azure hue surrounds him, vague structures on the edge of his vision. Spike lets his gaze wander. The structures are identified as metallic towers leaning in towards a pulsing column of light. Following the column down, he realises that he's lying on the ground and absently shifts himself into a seating position, wincing as his body protests with pain. Around the column is a hexagonal desk, a man dressed in a long black velvet coat madly rushing around it.

"You're awake! Good, help me with this will you?"

Spike blinks again. Is this meant to be Heaven or Hell? And if he's dead, why does he still hurt like buggery. "Who are you?" His voice is rough and cracked, but can be heard well enough.

"Yes, that's right," the man replies in a non-sequitur. "Now please, a life depends on me making the Tardis appear in a certain place at a very certain time. A life very dear to me. So if you can take the controls opposite me and do exactly as I tell you, I'd be very grateful."

Save the world... save one life. Hell, in for a pound, in for a penny. Somewhat confused, but deciding to go with the flow until he can work out exactly what's happened to him, he stands and painfully moves to the position indicating by the strange shaggy-haired Victorian. The desk has a variety of buttons, levers and other devices on it, looking for all the world like a cross between the Nautilus and the Enterprise.

"Thank you! Now move the temporal-gyro - that red stick there - until the crosshairs onscreen line up." The man quickly indicates an old-fashioned TV set above their heads as he manipulates controls on his side. With a shrug, Spike grabs the stick.

* * *

Exhausted and with little fight left in her, Ace watches the remaining bloodthirsty monsters speed towards her. By using their own movement and strength against them, she'd managed to manipulate several into the eruptions of light and fire, incinerating them completely. But that success hadn't lasted forever. Determined to face her destiny on her own terms, she grimly takes one simple step back, prepared to let gravity take its course.

And in that one second, everything changes.

She feels the sensation of rushing air, but remains motionless. New surroundings fade in, her heightened awareness causing her to perceive it almost in slow motion. A mere moment in realtime later and the transition is complete. Ace blinks in disbelief. She'd... she'd stepped back, into the chasm. What happened? Why isn't she dead?

Hearing a sound behind her, she whirls around to be confronted by a sight that even as the years passed she knew she'd someday see again. But now that the time has come, she's somewhat overwhelmed by the pulsing time rotar of the Tardis. Even though the console room is larger and grander than she ever remembered it, the glowing column is unmistakable.

She walks forward a few steps as if entranced, the hint of a smile appearing on her face. Then her eyes flick down, expecting to see the familiar straw hat and rubbery face of the Tardis' owner. "Pro..." she starts, then trails off as she sees a different and very younger face looking eagerly back at her. "Professor?"


End file.
